Tag: Nickelodeon

Gifted and Talented

I’m not surprised that the New York City Department of Education failed to increase the number of minority students in gifted and talented program; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/nyregion/30gifted.html.  The program was obviously created by a man used to working in an office with a staff, not a mommy juggling school and work and family and HOLIDAY obligations.  

I am a white college educated woman stay-at-home-(at least some of the time) mom-obsessed with my only child’s education AND I FAILED TO GET THE PROPER FORMS IN ON TIME in order for my child to take the gifted and talented test. 

Last year, right before vacation, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PRE-HOLIDAY CRAZINESS a letter came home about signing up for the special test.  The form was to be turned the first or second day back in school after the long Christmahanakwanzikadan New Year break.

The teachers were ambivalent with an “if this is interesting to you, it’s not mandatory…” note.

In MIDDLE OF THE PRE-HOLIDAY CRAZINESS this piece of paper did not get special treatment…

After the holidays, in the school office, a casual question in the school office.  The school secretary said the test was only if you wanted to leave this school.  My kid’s happy at the school where she is, which also happens to be on my husband’s way to work.

I don’t want to yank my kid out of the school where her friends go, and add a significant commute to her morning for her to attend a gifted and talented program somewhere deeper into Brooklyn that may be nowhere near our go-to subway line.

So…

For whatever reason…

I filled out the form, but I failed to turn it in by the deadline and my kid was not pulled out of class to take the special test.

I felt like a bad parent on that day of the test when the other more organized parents were talking about it.

My kid’s statistically minority friend who took the test well and was accepted into the gifted and talented program, well, she didn’t change schools.  Our school has no “gifted and talented” program.  They aspire to nurture the gifts of all the children.

Kids are not interchangeable like bricks.

Schools are eco-systems.

Children need more than accelerated programs, they need friends, they need to feel at home in the school building and comfortable in their classroom.  They need to be able to like their teachers and know their teachers enjoy them.

At 8, 9 or 10 years old kids are not thinking about their future.  They live in the present looking forward to the end of the week at best.

Even Malia Obama, a bright student in a good school, with very prominent parents–when faced with the prospect of her father’s campaign’s unprecedented TV buy on multiple channels–only concern was if his program would pre-empt her favorite Nickelodeon and Disney Channels (which also happen to me my own child’s favorite channels–another reason to vote the Obama Family into the White House).

In production

I think I can officially say we are in production.  Lorraine and I have sent several e-mails back and forth today about gaps in the outline and which puppets need to be made.  That’s kind of cool.  On the other hand, I played with my kid in the apartment and it looks worse than it did when we got up this morning.  And, I’m not keeping up with putting away as we go along because I keep sneaking away from the pretend car/restaurant/dog run to check my e-mail and think about the piece.  At the same time I was trying to be really zen about letting My Kid decide what she wanted to do and being her playmate since as a parent I have noticed that it has been a while since she has engaged with her toys and that imaginative play that is so important that I take studio workshops to do it as an adult.  But the “play” that clowns do in the studio bears very little resemblance to my kid pretending to do the things I do which make me crazy when I play with her because I want to be going to the real store and really cleaning and going outside and running real errands.  I feel like a hostage in her imaginary car under the table with the dolls in their car seats folding and unfolding the toy stroller again and again.  Been there done that, don’t want to pretend today.  I feel guilty.  But, My Kid is at an age where she will watch the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon for hours on end and then talk like a sarcastic TV tween for the rest of the day.  I don’t know which is worse.  My Kid is going to be so dissappointed when she gets to high school and her campus doesn’t look like the Getty Museum with latte carts the way it does on Zoey 101.  And don’t tell me it won’t happen.  I was really traumatized when my first “real” job and life after college weren’t anything like the Mary Tyler Moore Show.